News: New route to OBE - scrambling senses with goggles and film

[Euphoric]

This isn't really drug news, so I figured this section would be best.

http://www.thestar.com/article/249415
Researchers duplicate out-of-body experience by scrambling senses with goggles and film

Aug 24, 2007 04:30 AM

You don't need to face death or force down a hallucinogenic drug to have an out-of-body experience.Scientists have come up with a way to create the sense of leaving one's body by using virtual reality goggles, video cameras and a pair of plastic sticks.

This is the first time the phenomenon has been induced in healthy people, according to the researchers, who reported their findings in a pair of studies published yesterday in the prestigious journal Science.

Creating an out-of-body experience in the laboratory can help scientists understand how a person perceives their "self" inside their body, Henrik Ehrsson, a researcher at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden and author of the first study, said at a press conference yesterday.

Ehrsson, who conducted his research at University College London, induced out-of-body experiences by intentionally scrambling a person's visual and tactile senses. Study participants sat in a chair, wearing virtual-reality goggles that showed live film taken from two video cameras placed two metres behind the chair. While a participant watched the film, essentially a view of the back of his head, Ehrsson used two plastic rods to simultaneously stroke the participant's real chest and his "virtual" chest.

All 12 participants felt as though they were sitting behind their body, looking at it from a distance.

"We are tricking the sensory organs," said Ehrsson, who also performed an experiment to test the participants' physiological response to perceived pain.

Another research team, led by Olaf Blanke, a researcher at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland, conducted a similar experiment, but used holograph-like computer simulations instead of live video.

Scientists who study out-of-body experiences hope to discover the root of self-consciousness and the relationship between the body and the self. The technique could also be used in video games or remote surgical procedures.

About one in ten people claim to have had an out-of-body experience, the researchers claim. People who have had a traumatic experience, such as a car accident, sometimes report seeing their body float away, and it is also associated with some medical conditions.

Peter Fenwick, a consultant neuropsychiatrist at London University and expert in brain function, said the studies shed little light on out-of-body experiences. He points to a Japanese study from the 1980s that is similar to Ehrsson's and Blanke's.

"If you change the apparent viewpoint of a subject and link it up to a sensory system, you can induce an out-of-body experience very easily," he said. Still, he added, the new studies confirm that the position of the body, as understood by its owner, is created within the brain.

Reputation Comments on this post:

good find